A scene the Los Angeles production of "Wicked," which is coming to San Francisco in the next Best of Broadway season.

A scene the Los Angeles production of "Wicked," which is coming to San Francisco in the next Best of Broadway season.

Photo: Joan Marcus

Image 2 of 3

A scene the Los Angeles production of "Wicked," which is coming to San Francisco in the next Best of Broadway season.

A scene the Los Angeles production of "Wicked," which is coming to San Francisco in the next Best of Broadway season.

Photo: Joan Marcus

Image 3 of 3

Witches to return to S.F., 'Wicked' birthplace

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The witches of Oz are coming back to San Francisco for an extended stay. "Wicked," the blockbuster musical that had its pre-Broadway world premiere at the Curran Theatre in 2003, is returning to the city where it was born. The version that opens in January at the Orpheum, in the yet-to-be-announced next Best of Broadway season, will sit down for an open-ended run.

Stephen Schwartz and Winnie Holzman's adaptation of Gregory Maguire's novel is a certified show-biz phenomenon. One of Broadway's highest grossing shows for four years, it has four American companies, including the regular touring production (which played the Orpheum in '05) and sit-down shows in Chicago and Los Angeles, as well as London, Japan and Germany, with Australian and Dutch companies on the way.

"Wicked" has grossed more than $950 million and been seen by some 12 million people worldwide, with the American companies adding another $5.5 million per week. Even its merchandise sales - now in excess of $70 million - have been setting records.

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Not bad for a show that failed to capture an expected best musical Tony award ("Avenue Q" was the upset winner). But its success hasn't been a complete surprise to producer David Stone, who's had a few hits in his career ("The Vagina Monologues," "The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee"). He says that the first inkling of it came in San Francisco.

"We got a sense there of how the show connected to audiences," he says over the phone from New York. "Something I'd never seen in my career. The first preview was on a Wednesday and Friday morning, there was a line out onto the street of people waiting to buy tickets. That was nothing but word of mouth. That's where you understood that this was really happening in a way you could only dream about."

"Wicked" was "created in San Francisco," says Stone, who's been with it since its early stages, after composer-lyricist Schwartz ("Godspell," "Pippin") convinced co-lead producer and Universal Pictures exec Marc Platt that Maguire's dystopian "Wizard of Oz" prequel would make a better musical than a movie. "It was rehearsed in New York, but it's the first place you put a show up, and the first audiences, that shapes the whole thing."

Schwartz, Holzman, director Joe Mantello and the producers reworked the show during and after its Curran run - cutting and rewriting scenes and songs, changing sets, costumes and choreography. The most significant revision, Stone says, was of the principal character of Elphaba (then played by Idina Menzel, who did win a Tony), the green-skinned rebel who would become known as the Wicked Witch of the West to "Oz" fans. Elphaba had to be strengthened and fleshed out to keep Kristin Chenoweth's manipulative "good" witch Glinda from owning the show.

That's part of why Stone says he's delighted to bring "Wicked" "home to San Francisco," when the Los Angeles production moves north in January. "People ask me what's been the most exciting moment in this whole process, and it really was that first preview at the Curran. We were standing in the back, Marc and I and Stephen and Joe. Kristin got some nice applause with her opening number. Then the back door opens and this girl runs downstage center, this young, idealistic, hopeful, innocent, beautiful green girl. And the audience went crazy.

"It's the same every night, no matter who's playing it. In that instant, they'd understood that if this character was not who they'd always thought she was, the person they'd feared in childhood, but more complicated than that, then perhaps we all are. That's something that can only happen in live theater, that big idea that happens in a flash. And that was the moment we all looked at each other and said, Ohmygod! Nothing has been quite as exciting as that."